Although his historical and imaginative works are now regarded as "rather sentimental," Henry Sandham excelled as an illustrator and was a keen observer of the lands he knew firsthand - Canada, California, Haiti, and the Azores. He was part of the landscape movement in Canadian art at the time of Confederation and his paintings and watercolours on Canadian subjects, and his scenes of the St. Lawrence River, the Gaspe, and the Maritime provinces, are currently judged to be "the most outstanding of his works."